The woman is Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck. She's a seductive housewife who would be much happier without her husband around. And I thought what it would be like if I didn't switch it off. Just close the garage doors and left him there. Together, Phyllis and Walter hatch a scheme to kill her husband and make it look like an accident. But in Double Indemnity , it's also a given that the protagonists are doomed. I couldn't hear my own footsteps.
It was the walk of a dead man," Walter agonizes. Hollywood was heavily policed by production codes, and it was bold for director Billy Wilder to take his popular stars and turn them into killers.
Film noir: Stories that exposed the dark underbelly of the American dream. Rich black and white with heavy shadows, and witty double entendres that skirted the censors. And the smoking. SO much smoking. After all, they were as good as dead anyway. Film noir came from the hard-boiled fiction of writers like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. Bernard F Dick notes that, thematically, film noir's most distinctive feature is the acceptance, if not affirmation, of a world in which blind chance has replaced divine providence.
Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you. Narrated through voiceover and flashbacks, Neff tells of his initial meeting with Phyllis, who seeks to renew her husband's car insurance policy, in 'one of those California Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago' in Los Angeles. In this scene, as Janey Place observes, Neff and the viewer watch as the Use this link to get back to this page.
Double indemnity: film noir and the dark side of masculinity. Author: Christopher Mallon. Date: Oct. From: Screen Education Issue Publisher: Australian Teachers of Media. Her first scene perfectly captures her allure and dominance — she appears undressed at the top of the staircase looking down at Neff.
She is a mix of sensuality and power and her verbal sparring with him establish her status as a force to be reckoned with. Interestingly, this depiction of sexually assertive women proved to be very popular with female audiences at the time. The femme fatale may be accused ultimately of being responsible for the downfall of the male hero, but for at least most of the film, women in the audience got to enjoy the depiction of a powerful woman who controls the situation.
Nevertheless there were some film noirs at the time, plus the revisionist film noirs from the s up to now, that challenge this portrayal by suggesting that it is obsessive and paranoid men who bring about their own downfall while the women get the blame. This depiction of sexually assertive women proved to be very popular with female audiences at the time. The representation of the femme fatale characters in film noir completely subverted the social norms of how women should behave.
The women in these films were tough, independent, intelligent and cunning. They used their sexuality to their advantage and often wielded considerable power over men. Therefore these sexually assertive women were very popular with female audiences because they so significantly defied the very restrictive traditional gender roles. Skip to content. Why is this? Follow Following.
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